John Lacey » Emotion

Painting Rage (Digitally Enhanced)

John Lacey — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 03:34:23 +0000

I’m going to level with you – I’m not really in the mood. Not really in a mood to do much of anything if I am being completely honest. But that doesn’t matter. I mean I wasn’t ‘in the mood’ (that elusive state) when I created the painting I present here. Infact this particular artwork was created precisely because I was in a horrible mood. I’m revisiting it today to show you what I did with it subsequently.

After I created this painting I really wanted to put myself in it. After all, I figured, whose rage was this exactly? So I edited myself into the photograph of the painting. Let’s call it mixed media…

I muse over this connection between art and emotion. Art makes us feel, but it can also embody how we (as artists) feel. Sometimes this can represent a long standing emotional response, other times it can be just a stolen moment. The video aboves shows this painting being created in real time. Ordinarily I am not this fluid. Ordinarily I obsess over every little detail. But I was so caught up in how I was feeling that I acted very differently. It was oddly empowering.

A Creative Catalyst

John Lacey — Wed, 19 May 2010 13:10:07 +0000

I’ve talked previously about how I wanted to paint but didn’t. Something I was perhaps less forthcoming about was that I had told a person, a very specific person, about my desire to paint. Infact painting was one small part of a much larger, more grandiose fantasy I had been concocting in my head. I was going to move to a new city, I was going to work during the day and study art at night and I was going to date that particular person.

Strangely it wasn’t this scenic imagining that got me started so much as when it became apparent that fantastical bubble had burst around me. I was in a hotel room in a city where I knew next to no one and was being essentially ignored by the person I traveled to see. A dear friend of mine accompanied me around the city when he could, but he was in the throes of his own significantly more successful romance and I didn’t want to tread on their toes. I watched a lot of tv in my hotel room. I spent a lot of time in food courts, particularly enchanted with one place that boasted home made chocolates. And I bought a sketchbook and some water colour pencils and a paintbrush. That sketchbook turned out to be one of the best investments I had made in some time. I filled it’s pages with childish drawings and trite poetry – my hopes, my fears, my sadness.

Something triggered me earlier tonight, it made me think of that person and that notebook. I probably won’t share it’s contents with anyone but there were times when it felt like my only friend in the world.

Maybe it would’ve been nice to disappear into the sunset with that particular person. But it didn’t happen and when it didn’t I started drawing in my new sketch book in the hotel room… to alleviate the boredom, to process the rejection, to foster some sense of things. It was an unhappy time but a powerful catalyst. Perhaps ultimately this will prove more worthwhile.

Nina Simone: It’s Not My Problem Where It Touches Them

John Lacey — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 06:20:24 +0000

As artists we can’t be responsible for how other people respond to our works.

Nina Simone:

I’m quite pleased. At least they hear the song. They hear it. And it touches them some place. Now it’s not my problem where it touches them… but I am pleased that it touches them.

This quotation is taken from an interview included as part of Nina Simone’s Protest Anthology.

John Lacey » Emotion

Painting Rage (Digitally Enhanced)

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A Creative Catalyst

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